


if wanting were enough id take you by the hand

by ContrEeri



Category: Naruto
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2019-11-21 06:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18138359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ContrEeri/pseuds/ContrEeri
Summary: He stands atop Suna's highest point, watching the sun set below the horizon, while a shadow watches him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Doing some tumblr prompts to get me back into the swing of things because I've been kinda stuck on the update for Art of Love and my final zine piece. This prompt was "this is becoming a habit"

“What?” 

“This.” 

Lee stares across the distance, watching the sun melt into the horizon line like molten gold. The desert sky is streaked with red like blood and the yellow of spring flowers. Petals drip, heavy and weeping, as Gai stares up with empty eyes at Lee. 

“It’ll be cold soon,” Gaara says behind Lee. The Kazekage has been watching him for months now, carefully monitoring the fragile way Lee has navigated his days since Gai’s death. Gaara doesn't always make his presence known with words, but Lee always knows he’s there. Lee can always feel him, can always feel his gaze against his back.

“I do not mind,” he says, voice quiet and fading on the breeze that brings the night. 

“You’ll catch a cold,” Gaara says. 

Lee shrugs. “I will not be much longer.” 

A warmth suffuses Lee’s right side, and he tears his gaze away from the setting sun and the memory of his dying sensei to meet Gaara’s gaze, sorrowful and searching. His eyes reflect the sunset, jade fractured with gold like a set of kintsukuroi ornaments. 

Lee has two halves of a broken jade talisman hidden beneath his pillow in the room that Gaara has graciously allowed him to stay in during his bereavement leave from his duties in Konoha. The talisman was a gift from Gai, a promise that he would always be okay.

The moment it had broken, Lee had known he would lose his sensei. 

He hadn’t been able to discard the pieces, nor had he been able to repair them. It had been almost a year now. 

Lee tears his gaze away from Gaara’s, trying not to think of the green of his eyes. He tries not to think of the green of Gaara’s eyes every night; he fights to push aside the red of his hair and the sand covering his skin; he buries thoughts of what his skin feels like beneath the sand multiple times a day. 

He hadn’t come to Suna to fall in love. He’d come to forget. Or maybe to heal. Tenten would tell him that forgetting wasn’t a healthy coping mechanism. Lee laughs at the memory, thinking of the scars on his hands and the unhealthy coping skills he’d practiced to get them. 

“Come inside,” Gaara says as a chill slides through the thin cotton of Lee’s tunic. Gaara’s hand slips into his, tugging gently. His fingers are smooth, but there’s a subtle roughness to them where the sand can mold no further. 

“It will be dark soon enough,” Lee says. The last rays of the sun’s light are finally fading, and the red and gold skyline has nearly been swallowed by deep blues and black. 

“He would not want this for you,” Gaara whispers, the tenor of his voice a tremble. 

Gaara never brings up Gai. 

He had offered Lee condolences at the funeral, offered him a place to stay when he’d heard that Lee would be taking a leave of absence, offered him silent comfort when words hadn’t been enough. But he hadn’t brought up Gai. Nor had he asked Lee when he would leave or for any sort of compensation for Lee's stay at the Kazekage’s estate; he hadn’t asked for anything in return except on the rare occasions when he said, “Good night,” and it sounded like “I hope your heart is healing”. 

Sometimes, when Lee's mind wanders away from his melancholy, in the dark of night as he tries to sleep, he thinks his heart is healing. When he wakes from dreams drenched in jade and blood red and sandstone, he smiles to himself until the weight of the world he is waking to crashes around him again. 

But Suna has been a balm to his bruised heart and Gaara has been the gold veins reconnecting the shattered pieces of it. 

Lee knows he has fallen in love with Suna. And with the Kazekage. 

But he fears that truth as much as he cannot avoid the truth of Gai’s death. Perhaps if things were different, perhaps if his heart didn’t ache he would be less scared. 

“Don’t go falling in love with some pretty kunoichi,” Tenten had said to him before he’d left for Suna. She’d tried to smile at him, but her words had been a heavy warning and her eyes had been brimming with tears.

“I do not think that will happen,” he’d told her. He hadn’t thought, then, that he’d be able to love anyone with a broken heart. 

“Oh, Lee,” she’d said, and pulled him into a hug. “You’re so stupid. Too soft and too sweet. Someone’s going to catch your eye, but just... be careful. With Gai-sensei... Just don’t jump into anything, okay?” 

Tenten had jumped into many things after Neji’s death—she’d jumped into missions and weapon-forging and training and argument after argument. Anything to keep her mind off his death, anything to keep from noticing his absence day in and day out. 

Lee worries, now that he knows it’s possible to love with a broken heart, that the only reason he loves Gaara is because the Kazekage is there. He is there when Lee is all alone, he is there when Lee hurts in unimaginable ways, he is there when Lee doesn’t think he can go on. 

He doesn’t want to love Gaara simply for being there. 

“What would he want for me?” Lee finally asks, tears cooling on his cheeks as he stares ahead at the dark desert. The moon’s silver light hangs low behind them, gently illuminating the flat expanse of sand surrounding them. 

“To live.” Gaara’s voice is at his ear, quiet and warm. Lee turns his head until there is scarcely any space between them. He could lean forward and kiss Gaara, throw all his fears away and do as Gaara had said. 

But he doesn’t. 

He can’t. 

He pulls back, he looks away from Gaara. “I am ready to go inside now.”


	2. kill me with your love so i don't die from the loneliness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes he doesn't want to die, but most of the time it's all he thinks about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt “i can’t just sit by and do nothing when you’re suffering so much”
> 
> tw for suicidal ideation

Lee stares out at the desert skyline—a different view tonight than on previous nights. He always finds a different place to stand and watch the sun set; he always hopes that a different perspective will bring about some sense of clarity or peace, some sort of solace. 

He hasn’t been able to find it out there, he hasn’t been able to see it in the reds and golds of the setting sun, nor in the purples and blues of the slowly bleeding fall of night.

“Lee,” Gaara tries again, an edge to his voice. He hates repeating himself, a fact Lee has learned over the last nine months of living in the Kazekage’s home under the careful watch of the household. 

“I heard you,” he says quietly. “But I do not know what to say.” 

“You could acknowledge that I said anything,” Gaara says, voice brittle. 

Lee nods. “Forgive me,” he murmurs, wondering if there isn’t more that he’s asking of Gaara with that request. “What could you do though?” he adds, pensive. “That you have not already done, that is.”  


It is Gaara’s turn to fall silent, his gaze heavy upon Lee. 

“Did you hear me?” Lee asks just to be cheeky, a small smile finding its way to his face. Sometimes he hates Gaara for making him smile, for making him feel anything besides miserable. He fears the burgeoning love in his heart as much as he hates it. What right does Gaara have to make him forget the pain from the loss of his sensei? What right does Lee have to love when Gai has died and will never love again? 

Lee knows it is unfair. Tenten lost Gai as well. He was as much her sensei to as he was Lee's, but he cannot help but think it is different. Gai was like a father to Lee, and the thought that his loss is greater for Lee twists bitter and possessive inside his heart. He does not mean to compare his pain with hers, but Tenten hadn’t needed Gai the way Lee had—she hadn’t molded herself in his image, she hadn’t followed determinedly in his footsteps only to lose her footing at the sight of vacant eyes and blood in the foliage.

He isn’t just mad at himself and Gaara. He’s mad at Tenten. He’s mad at Gai.

“I heard you,” Gaara returns. Something sharp coils within his words, something with teeth. 

“I am being impertinent,” Lee acknowledges. “I do not know why you come here every night... Is it just to tell me to come inside before I catch cold? Or do you think I would do something reckless...” He steps forward, closer to the edge of the wall. 

Gaara’s sand snaps forward before Lee's foot can kick pebbles over the edge of the cliff, creating a barrier between Lee, the setting sun, and the deadly fall before him. 

“You have a death wish.” It is a statement. A fact. Gaara knows what Lee has struggled with, just as Tenten knows, and Temari knows, and Kankurou and Shikamaru. Everyone knows what he’s thought about in the darkest parts of his mind. 

“If I were going to,” he says quietly, “your sand could not stop me.” 

Gaara’s gourd rattles. “Is that so?” 

“All it takes is Eight Gates,” Lee points out. “I could turn to ash and blow away on the wind. Your sand could not stop that.” 

Gaara is suddenly close, closer than he’s ever been. He’s been in Lee’s personal space before—far too many times and not quite enough—but not like this. He is crowding him, hot and vicious and desperate and _afraid_. 

Lee cannot recall a particular time he’s ever seen Gaara truly afraid. 

It changes the smooth lines of his face, changes the light in his eyes until the soft jade of them is grown dark, the irises wide and revealing the shutters that hide him from the world. He reaches out, unthinking, as though he could open those shutters. 

Gaara’s cheek is almost as smooth as glass, and he jerks back from Lee’s touch as though he’s been burned. Lee’s hand follows, Lee moves closer until now he’s crowding Gaara in kind, but instead of the heat and viciousness, he feels cold with neediness, feels as desperate for something to kill him as Gaara is desperate for Lee not to do something irreversible. 

“I wish you had never asked me to come here,” he breathes, voice trembling and tears stinging his eyes. “There are days when I forget about dying, when all I can think of is...” 

He stops himself from the admission burning his tongue. 

“What?” Gaara asks. He’s trembling. Like a leaf on the wind, threatening to break from its branch. Gaara’s breath is caught in his throat, held between his lungs and racing heart. 

Lee’s hand falls to Gaara's chest, falls to the heartbeat he can practically hear thrumming with his own. 

“I cannot do this,” he says. The words sound like breaking glass. He looks up into Gaara’s eyes. 

Gaara presses himself into Lee’s palm, places his own hand over Lee’s and grips it tight. “This feeling.”  


Lee shakes his head. He is strong enough to pull his hand from Gaara’s, but he tugs lightly, reluctant to let go. “If things were different—” 

“They could be. You don’t have to live like this, you don’t have to cry yourself to sleep every night—”

“Why do you care?!” Lee shouts. He doesn’t mean to, but he can’t keep it in. Everything that has happened since Gai’s death crashes around him—the pain, the anger, the denial, the frustration, the regret, the loss, the confusion. It is an agony and a relief to yell. His face is warm, his skin tingles with the release, his heart pounds, his head spins. “Why does it matter to you!? I am nobody! I have never been anybody—except to Gai-sensei! Why do you care what I do with my life? Why do you care—”

Lee isn’t sure if it’s Gaara’s hands that push him or the sand, but he’s suddenly flat on his back with the wind knocked out of him and Gaara growling and bearing down on him. 

“Why don’t you care?!” he shouts back. “Why don’t you care about anyone else in all this? What happened to the man I knew? What happened to the strength you carried? What happened to the kindness you offered every person you met? Who are you now that your sensei is gone? Do you even know? Are you that far gone to your grief?” 

Lee’s back aches and his chest heaves as he stares up into Gaara’s twisted face. He’s angrier than Lee has ever seen him, angrier than Lee thinks he’s been in years. 

“I... do not know,” he stutters, the words choking him. “I do not know, Kazekage-sama.” 

Gaara’s hands twist in Lee's tunic, pulling him from the ground until they are nose to nose. “Figure it out. Or leave my village.” 

Gaara disappears a moment later in a flurry of sand that bites at Lee’s exposed skin. 

Lee is left, lying in the dark of the night, crying as stars twinkle and the moon’s silver light bathes him. 

He doesn’t return to the Kazekage’s estate that night, too afraid of looking into Gaara’s eyes and seeing only his broken talisman and all the broken promises of his youth within their depths.


	3. begging for death is easier than asking for your love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has a foolish, broken heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt "i need help"

The pre-dawn light is a gentle blue-grey and the moon’s crescent is still visible behind him against a backdrop of fading black. The sluggish rise of the sun over the desert washes stars from the sky like water cascading across glass to wash it clean. 

Lee shivers against a cool breeze. Behind him, gravel crunches: Gaara has arrived. 

“You didn’t come home,” he says, his tone clipped but revealing. 

“It is a three-day journey to Konoha,” Lee points out. “Two if I open gates.” 

Gaara shifts and a faint shadow takes a place beside Lee. “I didn’t mean Konoha.” 

Lee doesn’t look at him, afraid of what he’ll see in Gaara’s eyes. He worries the loose bandages, stained red throughout, staring ahead. “I did not think I would be welcome.” 

“That couldn’t be farther from the truth.” 

Lee thinks about Gaara’s face, twisted with rage and fear not twenty-four hours ago. He doesn’t know if that was true then, but it’s true enough now. “I am sorry if I worried you.” 

“You worry me every day,” Gaara says. His shadow shifts, drawing Lee’s gaze to it like gravity. 

“I know,” Lee finally says, a quiet admission of guilt. He watches Gaara’s shadow, trying to imagine his expression. “It seems that is all I do these days.” 

Silence falls around them, stretching across time as morning light stretches across the sky. It’s a slow, lethargic glow that lightens the skyline until the grey has been overwhelmed by the perfect blue of a beautiful day.

“You’re hurt,” Gaara says. There is a hitch of worry in his voice. 

“I have been hurt worse,” Lee says. He picks at dried blood, watching it flake from his knuckles, the skin of which is open and dirtied with blood and sand. “This is nothing.” 

“Is that what you think?” 

“It is the truth,” Lee tells him. He almost turns to look at Gaara, something in the rise and fall of his tenor dragging Lee’s treacherous gaze to him. He stops himself, staring at the hem of Gaara’s cloak for only a brief second. He turns his gaze back to the horizon where the first rays of golden light are cresting the dunes of sand that reside in the east of Wind. 

“Did you open Gates?” 

Lee shakes his head. He huffs a soft burst of air from his mouth, white as a ghost in the cool morning air. “I wanted to.” 

“Why?” 

Lee does not answer. He knows why he wanted to. Gaara also seems to know why, though how Gaara knows baffles Lee. It baffles him the way Gaara watches him, the way Gaara lets him live in his home, the way Gaara seems to know what’s in his heart better than even Tenten. 

“Do you think it’s better?” Gaara finally asks.

Lee frowns. “What?” 

“Physical pain.” 

“Better than what?” Lee hedges, trying to forestall answering the question he knows Gaara is asking. 

“Don’t play dumb.” 

Lee almost wants to laugh. “People used to say that about me,” he says, deflecting. “They used to call me hot-blooded and stupid. Some still do.” 

“You are hot-blooded,” Gaara points out. “But I don’t doubt your intelligence. Though I do think you have a foolish heart.” 

“A foolish heart,” he repeats, feeling strangely hollow at the words. 

“Yes. And once upon a time, it was your greatest strength. Now it is your greatest weakness.” 

Lee wants to cry again, as he’d done all night, going over their fight in his head, repeating the words Gaara had shouted at him, reliving the anger in Gaara’s eyes. He’d been ungracious, he’d been selfish. After all that Gaara and his family had done for Lee, he’d spat in their faces.

“Perhaps that is why shinobi do not have hearts,” Lee finally says, wistful and longing. “Perhaps I should have turned my heart to stone.” 

“If you had, you would have died.” 

“I would rather die now if this is what it means to be a warrior with a heart like mine.” 

“Would you really?” 

Lee hesitates, tears welling in his eyes. “Y-yes.” The truth hurts more than the loss now, it hurts more than the getting of the many scars on his body, hurts more than opening even the Seventh Gate. Lee wonders if it hurts more or less than death. 

“I don’t believe that,” Gaara tells him, thunder rumbling beneath his words.

“I am not much of a liar,” Lee says.

“No, but if that were true we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” 

The statement stings, like a slap to the face. Lee finally turns, looking up into Gaara’s face. The morning light hits him just so, illuminating him in all his tremendous power. He is radiant. Luminous. Untouchable. Mesmerizing. He is the song that Lee cannot get out of his head, no matter how hard he tries; he is the flower pushing through the snow; he is the final blow against Lee’s grief, the last step towards solace. 

He is the step Lee can’t take it. He won’t take it as he is, but he no longer knows how to be anything but this and he still wonders if the anger and resentment that Gaara makes him feel will ever go away. He makes Lee feel so many things and he makes him feel nothing—with him the pain becomes a distant memory; with him he feels alive and _so_ good—like he hasn’t since Gai’s death. Gaara makes him feel that it might be possible to be a whole person again; makes him want to smile and laugh like he once did.

But he doesn’t want those things and he doesn’t know how to want those things anymore. He wants to stay here, balanced on the edge of a cliff, waiting for death. 

“How do I live again?” Lee finally asks. “How—how do I live the way you said I should?” 

“Do you want to live?” 

Lee huffs. They have already gone over this. “I have said—”

“Stop lying to yourself,” Gaara snaps. “Don’t ask me ‘how’ if you’re going to keep lying. Either you want to live or you don’t, and if you don’t I already told you—”

“I can go. I can leave Suna.” 

Gaara swallows his words. “No.” 

“But you said I should.” 

“I was angry.” 

“You were about to tell me to leave again,” Lee points out, calling Gaara’s bluff. “Did you just tell me to leave to make me feel guilty?” 

Gaara’s silence is electric. Lee imagines that if he moves the ground will be static. “No. I said it because I was angry. I still am.” 

“Then I should go.” 

“No,” Gaara says it again, hard as a wall of sand. 

“What do you want from me?” 

“What do you want from yourself?” 

Lee hates the way that question curdles in his blood. “I want... I want to want to live.” 

The energy between them snaps, breaks like a band stretched too tight for too long. Lee feels a sob crawling its way up his throat. 

“Lee.” 

“I need help,” he admits, broken and vulnerable and resentful. “I need help, but I do not want it and I do not want to be here, but I do not want to leave either.” 

The words tumble from him, guts spilling to darken the sand with blood, and he shudders at the way it feels. He’s been ripped open, disemboweled and stripped naked for Gaara to see. His shoulders shake with emotion he wants to hold back, as though he could return his spilled guts to his body. 

Warmth like sunshine wipes tears from his face and wraps itself around him. He opens his eyes to meet Gaara’s. He is a merciful, benevolent god—his face glows, his eyes are stark and gentle, his hands are soft with care—and Lee is unworthy, underserving, a lowly mortal. He sucks in a breath.

“Shh,” Gaara murmurs. It is an awkward sound from him, his expression and the gesture of comfort stiff and unpracticed. 

Lee has a foolish, broken heart. 

He knows that is why he leans forward, he knows that is why he gives in to the feelings he doesn’t deserve, he knows that is why he captures Gaara’s mouth with his, a chaste and unpracticed kiss. 

It is everything he has dreamed it would be. 

And then Gaara shoves him, pushes him away until Lee has to use his chakra to stick to the cliff’s edge while Gaara scrambles away, sand ricocheting around them until it has consumed Gaara. 

Lee is left alone all over again with his heart somehow more broken than before.


	4. i'm not living for myself but i can't live for you; maybe love's not meant to be, maybe death is all we can do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a moment of clarity before impact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: attempted suicide.  
> seriously please do not read this if you think it will be triggering. this was hard for me to write, but cathartic in its own right. that being said, i don't want anyone putting themselves through something that might be bad for them so read cautiously if you choose to. 
> 
> the prompt was "i don’t want to lose you"

He jumps.

He falls.

He flies. 

The morning air rushes past him as he plummets, his weights pulling him like an anchor tearing through the ocean. His heart is in his throat and tears blur his vision as he falls towards the earth. The morning sun is a blur of soft golden hues, a kaleidoscope of light refracting within the salt water of his eyes.

He feels free for the first time in far too long. 

He feels weightless.

He feels wonderful. 

He laughs, the sound swallowed by the wind rushing around him, but it turns into a sob. He is flying to his death, falling towards the inevitable moment of impact. He has jumped towards the unknown, allowed gravity to pull him down, down, down... And when he finally stops—

A memory comes to him, unbidden. It is the memory of a dream, but it makes his heart ache to be standing on solid ground, not plummeting towards it.

Regret burns through him, like lava pouring from a long dormant volcano. It sears his heart, smokes in his veins until he is consumed with it; with longing; with want. 

He wants, for the first time, to live. 

He punches a hand into the solid wall of rock that hides Suna within. His chakra surges, heavy and forceful, but he has too much momentum, his weights are too heavy and the pull of gravity is stronger than he is. He pushes more chakra into his arm and flings the other one towards the wall, digging his fingers into stone. 

He feels the snap of bone as several fingers break against the stone, but he doesn’t let go. He doesn’t stop trying to hold on. He closes his eyes tight, pushes poorly manipulated chakra into his arms with as much force as he can until he feels himself slow. 

It isn’t enough. The ground crashes into him, shattering his weak right leg and sending an explosive wave of sand into the air. His world goes black before he can pray to the gods of the desert that someone finds him.  
\---

Pain has always been a sign of growth—he becomes stronger, faster, harder, better. In the wake of pain, he is one step closer to being splendid. Pain has always been firmly categorized in his mind as “good”, as “progress”, as “someday I will be good enough.” 

He pushes himself to the point of pain because it has always been the only way to measure his worth. 

But when Lee wakes to pain, to agony, to suffering it is beyond the pain of “good” or “progress” or “enough”. His body has known pain like this only once before, and even that pain does not come close to what this feels like. A blurry memory, choppy and incomplete, hits him with the force the ground had. 

With the memory comes shame, and the regret that had burned through him as he'd fallen. He wishes that he could take it back, wishes that the past could be altered somehow, wishes that he’d known any other way besides pain. 

It takes him a lifetime, an age, an eon to adjust to this unimaginable pain. 

At the edge of his senses, as he finally acclimates to a body he’d rather not be in, he senses someone familiar. He becomes aware, too, of a dull beeping somewhere in the room and voices outside. His nose stings with the smell of herbs and antiseptic. 

He swallows, thickly. His mouth feels like sand and tastes like ash, his throat feels stuffed full of cotton. He coughs, and the presence beside him moves closer, an intensity closing in on him. 

“Lee?” 

Fingertips touch his temple, gentle and unsure, awkward and stiff. 

He sighs, peeling his eyes open to look up into Gaara’s face. He looks sick, exhausted in ways Lee had never thought possible; his eyes are heavy and bloodshot, and his skin looks dull and lifeless. Lee shies away from that word as he looks away from Gaara to survey his hospital room. 

“Where—” He coughs on the question, his throat too dry for speech, and almost immediately there is a glass of water in front of him. He hesitates to meet Gaara’s gaze past the glass, but eventually he does. 

There are tears in his eyes, threatening to fall—and that’s another word Lee shies away from all too quickly. 

He sips the water carefully, but some dribbles down the side of his mouth. It’s room temperature and tastes a little stale, as though it’s been sitting for just a little too long in the warmth of his room. 

“How—why—” Lee wants to ask a million questions once his throat does not feel as though a drought has occurred within him, but he doesn’t know where to begin. Gaara looks stricken, as though Lee’s voice is that of a ghost speaking. 

He swallows again, steeling himself for what he’s about to say. 

“You saved me.” 

The tears in Gaara’s eyes roll down his face. His eyes are crystalline, reflecting the artificial light of the hospital in a way that makes the green of them look unnatural. 

“Did I?” he asks, voice gruff around the words and his tears. 

“I am alive,” Lee says. 

Gaara’s lip trembles. “Are you...? Or are you a ghost?” 

Lee knows what Gaara is asking, what he’s saying with that question. Tears of his own fall, but he has to fight not to sob openly because he can feel how it will hurt, how it will subsume his body with pain; pain he deserves—

He stops himself from that line of thinking, meeting Gaara’s tear-filled eyes with his own. “I do not want to be a ghost anymore.” 

Lee doesn’t know exactly what he’d thought Gaara would say or do at this, but he does not expect Gaara to collapse in on himself, face crumpling and eyes brimming with so many tears that they have become sea foam. He leans heavily against Lee’s bed, hovering over Lee as though he wants to crawl onto him, into him, bury himself within Lee and hold him tight enough so he can never leave. 

It takes Gaara long moments to collect himself. He cries quietly, his face scrunched up in ways Lee has never seen as tears run amuck across his face, down his nose, beneath his chin. They descend to the bedsheets, like rain, darkening the plain white like a scattered spring shower. 

Lee watches Gaara cry in silence. He doesn’t want to see this, but he feels he owes it to Gaara to witness this—to witness the devastation he’s caused. 

“Y-you should have died,” Gaara says. The words hurt more than his body, but Gaara keeps talking before Lee can runaway with the horrible truth that Gaara had wanted him dead all along. “I thought—when I found you—I was so sure. You should have died on impact, there was so much blood and—” He breaks off, looking away from Lee as though looking at him is a reminder of that very day, as though Gaara is not looking at a healing Lee but a dying Lee. 

Lee’s voice trembles when he speaks, weak and fragile like delicate glass. “I w-wish I could—I could take it back. All of it. Everything that has happened since I came here. Everything.” 

Gaara looks at him with wide, glassy eyes, something flickering behind them that Lee cannot name. “Everything?” 

Lee nods. His memory is like wisps of smoke that he cannot hold onto, but he would never forget their kiss. “Everything,” he confirms.

“No.” Gaara is seething, the word slips from him like some sort of magic, a binding curse that Lee cannot free himself from. “You can’t. Don’t you dare take that back.” 

Lee frowns up at Gaara, confusion heavy on his brow. “But... you pushed me away.” 

“I was scared.” 

Lee comes up short. He doesn’t know what to think of this admission, doesn’t know what he’s meant to do with it. He is stuck now on the fact that Gaara does not want him to take back the kiss, hung up on the fact that Gaara won’t let him take it back. 

“When you first came here, I thought I could help,” Gaara says quietly. “I thought... It was self-important to think that because I’d been through trauma and loss, that I could somehow fix you. But I wanted to see you smile again.

“Sometimes you seemed to be getting better, but then you’d slip away again. We were all scared of what you’d do to yourself, but I thought if I just kept an eye on you it would be okay. You would be okay. Eventually. But you weren’t. And I yelled at you, and then you didn’t come home. I’d thought you had done something, I’d thought you’d hurt yourself but you were there, just sitting on the edge of the plateau, watching the sun rise.” 

He sucks in a breath, practically gasps as though the memory itself has winded him. 

“Do you love me?” 

The question startles Lee so much he flinches. It hurts to move, and the hurting of movement causes his body to seize up in protest. It hurts all the more because of this. 

“I should get a medic.” 

“N-no, wait. Please.” Lee shifts, but he cannot push himself up—his left hand is in a cast and his right arm so heavily bandaged he cannot see the skin beneath, but he can feel the pull of his skin and knows it is not a sight worth seeing. 

Gaara moves closer, hesitating at the edge of the bed before he takes a seat. 

Lee wants to hold his hand, he wants to touch him so that he knows Gaara will not run away again. And maybe because he hopes it will offer Gaara some semblance of comfort too. 

After a moment of fighting with tendons and ligaments he knows he's damaged perhaps beyond repair, Lee manages to move his bandaged hand enough that it gently presses against Gaara’s thigh. The pressure hurts, however gentle it may be, but he doesn’t care. He knows he should care, knows he needs to stop thinking of pain as unquestioningly positive, but he wants to be a little selfish for just a little bit longer; he wants to feel Gaara as he pours his heart out to him. 

“I do not want to give you an answer that is anything less than the truth,” he manages to say, though the words are not as steady and strong as he would have liked them to be. “For a long time, I have thought about you. And maybe that is...” He pauses, his head beginning to ache. The lights are too bright and he is sure he has some head trauma, but he needs to get this out before he forgets. “In truth, I do not think I know what love means anymore.” 

Gaara is watching him, still as a statue save for the subtle movement of his eyes as they flit across Lee’s face. He doesn’t speak, and Lee is grateful for that if only because he is afraid of what Gaara will say. 

“And I do not think I know how to be as I was anymore, and I know that as I am now, it would be unfair to say I do. I might not. I may just... love that you are here when I need someone.” 

Gaara lets out a shaky breath, lips parting fractionally to let the air escape. Tears glisten in his eyes, and Lee wants so badly to reach up and wipe them away. He can’t—physically limited as he is—and he shouldn’t. Before Gaara can think to say anything in response, Lee continues. 

“I have hurt you. I have been selfish in my grief. I have thought of only myself—perhaps that is understandable, perhaps to a point it is even reasonable. But it has been almost a year, and I have not allowed myself to heal. I have wallowed, and any chance at healing I have rebuffed. I was so determined not to go on without my sensei that I pushed everyone away, pushed myself away. And because of that, I have hurt you.

“I never meant to,” he adds, tears coming to his eyes unbidden. “I truly never meant to. I just... I wanted it to stop. I wanted to...” He presses his lips together, fighting tears and the agony that comes with his words. “I do not know anymore. I just—every day it felt as though someone had come and carved a hole in my chest. I did not know who I was anymore—I do not know who I am. 

“And after what happened, I do not know what it will take to get better, but I want to get better. I do. And maybe if I can, maybe if I do then I can tell you without a doubt that I do love you.” He wants so badly to tell Gaara he loves him, wants so badly for something beautiful to come from all the ugliness he’s felt, but he wants it to be real; he doesn’t want to give Gaara false promises and false love. 

His head is throbbing fiercely now, along with the rest of his body. Exhaustion runs through his veins, and it is suddenly difficult to think of all the important things he’d realised as he’d fallen towards his death. He opens his mouth, but only manages to slur on words his mind is too sleepy to remember. 

Gaara reaches out for him, touching his cheek with those same unsure fingertips. He trails them across his face, wiping at tears, then moves to touch his lips. 

“I don’t want to lose you again,” Gaara tells him. 

Lee wants to promise him that he won’t, wants to promise “never again”, but he remembers the broken talisman beneath his pillow and he can't. He doesn’t know who he is or who he will become, and he doesn’t want to promise that Gaara won’t lose the person Lee used to be.

“I will get better,” he says, because he thinks he can at least promise that. “When I do, if I know my feelings for you to be true, I will come back.”

“You’re going?”

“I think it is for the best.” His eyes droop, but he fights against it. “You have done everything you can—too much, in fact. It is time I get better on my own, Kazekage-sama.” 

Gaara’s nod is a tiny, imperceptible thing, barely a motion at all. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.” 

Lee manages to smile, a proper smile, for what feels like the first time in his life.


	5. there's gold in my veins because i fell in love with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's finally where he wants to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i won’t say ive returned to full activity, writing or otherwise, but i really wanted to push myself to write something today because i miss it and i’ve been #gointhroughit and it felt like i needed to complete this since it resonates with where i’ve been at mentally for... a while now . i was going to post this last night but i wasn't really feeling it. still not sure how i feel about it but i think this should wrap up this series of one-shots
> 
> and it should (hopefully) be less triggering since it’s a happy ending, but there will still be mentions of suicidal ideation and attempts
> 
> the prompt for this was "I made the decision to be here"

The sunset hasn’t changed since the last time he’d seen it. It’s still as glorious and golden as he remembers it, but something still feels strange about it; something still feels off about standing here.

He doesn’t stand close to the edge and Gaara’s gaze is not burning into his back as the sun slowly disappears behind familiar dunes, but he doesn't think that's why it feels so strange to be here. He swallows, tears stinging the edges of his eyes.

It is bittersweet to be standing here, and just a little terrifying. 

It’s been three years since he’d stepped out into the air and plummeted towards the earth; it’s been three, long and painful years of healing, physically and mentally, from the trauma of that day, as well as from the loss of his sensei. 

He’s equal parts amazed and baffled that he was capable of bringing himself back to this place. He questions the wisdom in choosing this exact spot, but when he’d looked up at the high walls as he'd approached Suna, it had called to him. 

It was the final step on his road to recovery, and now that he’s standing here, he’s not sure how to feel. He feels simultaneously hollow and full, exhausted and awake, heartbroke and heart-whole. He is no longer standing on the precipise of disaster, but he knows that it will always haunt him. The man he'd been in his grief haunts him, and even though Lee thinks that part of him died when he'd hit the ground, he knows this is not the end. 

He had hoped it would be, that standing here would offer clarity; that standing here would be like closing that chapter on his life. It's not. 

But he can breathe. He can feel. And he doesn't want to step any closer to the edge.

Behind him, there is a familiar flare of chakra and the soft pattering of sand cascading to the ground as Gaara materializes. 

Lee closes his eyes, not quite ready to look at him. 

It’s been a month shy of three years since they’d last seen each other. During Lee's long recovery, Gaara had not visited Konoha—not even for political meetings.

Some part of Lee feared that Gaara had not wanted to see him, that perhaps Gaara hated him after everything that had transpired. He’d almost written to Gaara, almost sent him countless letters telling him about his progress and his failings, about his fears and his hopes, about how much he missed him. He’d almost run to Suna once after a particularly vivid and horrifying dream.

But he’d never given in. If he had, then he’d have failed. 

His therapist had told him it was an unfair and harsh stipulation to place on his recovery, but it hadn’t just been for him. Gaara had needed time to heal, too. 

Lee hopes, as he opens his eyes and turns to look at Gaara, that three years was enough. 

Gaara is looking past Lee, towards the steadily fading sunrise, unseeing. 

Lee wonders, guilt sitting heavy in his stomach, if he’s remembering that day. 

“Why did you come here?” Gaara’s voice is as he remembers it: soft, smooth, and deep. It washes over him, comforting and soothing, but the words he speaks make Lee’s heart jolt. 

“I finished my therapy,” he murmurs. He wants to say more, he wants to tell Gaara that he's not perfect but he's better, he wants to tell Gaara that he's missed him with all his heart. But the look on Gaara's face stops him. Gaara’s memory is far too good for him to have forgotten what Lee had promised the day he’d woken from his coma, and regret coils in the pit of his stomach. He should have written to Gaara first, made sure that he’d want to see Lee. 

“I meant here. This place.” The words are sour like curdled milk. Lee can hear the pain hiding just beneath the steady tenor of Gaara’s voice. 

“Oh.” Lee looks up at the sky above him where night is slowly taking over day. The dark of night is a deep, comforting blue. “I do not know why I made the decision to be here specifically. I think I needed to though.” 

“Is that part of your therapy?” 

Lee shrugs. “I suppose.” He looks back at Gaara, who still has not looked at him. “I did not know if you would come.” 

Gaara’s gaze flicks to Lee for a fleeting moment that’s over too quickly. Lee still feels electric in the wake of that look. “I almost didn’t.” 

Lee’s heart might break at the words, but he accepts them. He has learned how to accept heartache, but the sting of it is still hard to speak through. “I understand. I should have written first. It was silly to think you would want to see me.” 

Gaara huffs. “I want to see you. I have wanted to see you everyday for the last three years. But this place..." He steps close to the cliff's edge, making Lee's heart jump. He leans carefully forward, looking down the far fall Lee is unfortunately familiar with. "I still can’t forget what you looked like when I found you.” 

Lee wishes, not for the first time, that he could turn back time. He wishes he’d never jumped, wishes Gaara had never invited him into his home, wishes he’d never learned to love with a broken heart. 

He pulls a small silk, drawstring bag from his pocket. The silk is golden and nubby, not smooth and buttery, and it shines subtly in the fading light of the sun. 

“I can leave,” Lee offers. “But I wanted to give you this. It is not much, but it was a gift from Gai-sensei. I wanted you to have it.” 

Gaara turns to Lee, but doesn't meet his gaze. He stares down at the little gold satchel warily. “I do not want to take something precious from you.” 

Lee shakes his head. “You have given me something precious, and it is my turn to give you something precious.” 

“I haven’t given you anything.” 

“You did,” Lee whispers, taking a tentative step closer. Gaara shifts as though he might back away, but he doesn’t. “You gave me back my life.” 

“I did no such thing. I failed at helping you and you nearly died.” The words catch in his throat, fighting against unshed tears and unspoken pain. 

“If it were not for you, I would be dead. I made the choice to get better because I realised that you were right. I did not want to die. It has taken a long time, but I am finally the man I want to be.” Lee tries to meet Gaara’s gaze, but he still avoids Lee’s face. “Please, Kazekage-sama. I will never ask anything of you ever again, and I promise I will not darken your doorstep—”

“You’re leaving?” 

“If that is what you want.” 

“Far from it.” 

“You cannot even look at me.” 

Gaara seems to steel himself, his gaze flitting back and forth from Lee’s hand to the ground before he finally brings it up to meet Lee’s. There is a split second where he takes in Lee’s face—the scars from his fall, the smile on his face, the light in his eyes—before tears spring to his eyes. He steps forward, reaching past the little bag to trace a scar that runs from beneath Lee’s eye to the edge of his mouth. His fingers tremble as they skate across the raised edge of the scar and tears spill down his face in streaks.

“I wondered what it would be like if you ever came back,” Gaara whispers, leaning closer, his eyes fixed on Lee’s face. Lee cannot help but lean in until he is pressing his forehead against Gaara’s. He closes his eyes as Gaara’s fingers map his face. 

“I am sorry it took so long.” 

Gaara shakes his head. “I could have waited a hundred years if it meant seeing you smile again.” 

Lee feels overcome by the addmission. He wants to close the gap between them and kiss Gaara like he had all those years ago, but he is suddenly petrified. He holds up the little bag instead, bringing up his other hand to cup Gaara’s cheek.

“Will you accept this?” 

“Will you stay?” 

A smile stretches wide across Lee’s face. It's the kind of smile he used to share with the world, the kind that he is only just getting used to again. He nods. “If you will have me.” 

Gaara takes the bag quietly, pulling it open and taking from its depths a small jade talisman, a vein of gold connecting the two halves. He runs his thumb over the lotus etched within, looking up at Lee. 

“I had it repaired,” he explains. “It broke the day Gai-sensei died. But I could not bring myself to fix it until recently.”

“I will treasure it,” Gaara promises, the words barely a whisper. “Why give this to me though?” 

“Because you were the gold that first filled the cracks in my heart. Because I want to be the gold in your heart.” 

Gaara stares up at Lee, his expression quietly alarmed but his gaze bright. Lee realises, belatedly, that Gaara is a more literal person than he is and that the picture he has painted is perhaps a bit grotesque in Gaara’s mind.

“Kintsukuroi wouldn’t work with internal organs,” Gaara finally says.

Lee laughs, loud and free and happy. 

“I did not mean it literally,” he manages, wiping a stray tear from the corner of his eye. "I simply meant that I love you."

“I know,” Gaara says, leaning close. “Are you planning on kissing me now?” 

Lee abruptly stops laughing, straightening to his full height. “I did not want to assume.” 

Gaara rolls his eyes. “I thought the point of being in this place was to make better memories here. To rewrite the old.” 

Lee had not thought of that when he'd first made the trek up Suna's high walls, but now that Gaara has said it, he realises the sense in it. “I had not thought of that,” Lee says as Gaara leans closer. 

“I could use happier memories of this place.” Gaara’s words ghost across Lee’s lips, sending sparks across his skin and down his back. 

Lee closes the space between them, pressing his mouth to Gaara’s tentatively. It is not the kiss from three years ago, though it is still unpractised. But this is a different kiss: it feels like coming alive, not like the cold neediness of Lee’s depression and grief. Lee wraps his arms around Gaara, pulling him close, basking in the warmth of him as if he were the sun. 

It has taken Lee three years to get to this place; three years to become the man he’d thought he’d lost to grief; three years to allow himself to heal and love with all his broken, foolish, kintsukuroi heart. 

Lee laughs into the kiss, breaking it to stare into Gaara’s face, bathed in golden light from the setting sun. Gaara’s eyes meet his, the fading sunlight reflecting in them just as it had done all those years ago. Now, Gaara doesn’t look at him with fear and trepidation; there is no longer worry shot through with the golden light from the sun. 

All Lee sees is the love he’d missed out on, the love he could have lost if he’d let his grief consume him. 

He sighs, pressing his forehead to Gaara’s again. “Thank you.” 

“For kissing you?” 

Lee laughs. “For saving me.”


End file.
